


Patterns of the Sun and Moon

by lottie_anne



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, Hurt Lance (Voltron), M/M, Mental Instability, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:40:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25028656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lottie_anne/pseuds/lottie_anne
Summary: Lance Mcclain is beautiful. He is hauntingly beautiful and unstable and alone. He craves to feel but Love is not a gift for plastic dolls.Or, Lance struggles with his mental health and upbringing and doesn't know how to ask for help. Keith only has eyes for the pretty boy with cloudy eyes, and Shiro just wants to make sure Lance gets home safe.
Relationships: Hunk/Shay (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45





	Patterns of the Sun and Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thank you for choosing to read this! I truly hope you enjoy this piece as it is one of the most truthful and deeply personal pieces I have ever written. It's essentially my childhood and current struggles + Lance Mcclain. 
> 
> This fic is ultimately about struggle within oneself and as a WARNING: it contains depictions of my own personal mental struggles alongside unhealthy coping mechanisms and responses. 
> 
> I'm so grateful you've chosen to read this and I'm sending every single one of you all of my love and support! All the Love xx

Tiny rivulets of sweat slip down Lance’s forehead. They run slowly at first, then suddenly and all at once they fly over the hills of his cheekbones and down his jawline to pool at his chin and drip slowly onto the wrinkled collar of his t-shirt. It’s a rhythm that he can follow. 

Slow. Deliberate. Steady. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows there are things happening in front of him. A blur of movement swings by the corner of his vision. A burst of babbling noises collide with the barrier surrounding him that’s muffling the world around him. He’s untouchable. And in his own private world there is only sweat and wrinkled shirts. So he traces the path of his sweat, gliding down his chin like its eroding divots into his skin.

It’s the only thing he can bring himself to think about. Lance’s life is stretched out behind him as a spindling thin line, and as it catches up to him, it too collides with the barrier and dissolves away into a steady drip, drip, drip of perspiration. 

And then suddenly it’s gone. The tumbling sweat and steady familiarity melts into nothing and the world comes spinning back up at him- so dizzying that Lance digs his fingernails into the soft skin of his thigh to remind himself of his tangibility. 

Hunk and Shay are sitting in front of him, their textbooks and snacks spread across their blankets in lines like little ants headed towards a collective destination. They’re murmuring things to each other as they scribble equations and figures Lance could never understand onto loose leaf paper stained with coffee rings and sticky from the heat. His brain feels fuzzy and disconnected, a layer is separating him from his friends. Lance knows that he inhabits a realm entirely apart from theirs- one of confusion and chaos and uncertainty. They too seem to be in their own world but theirs’ is one of security- of comfort and softness and  _ love _ . The couple is so picturesque Lance wants to paint them. His hands itch for something and he snatches his camera in a desperate attempt to capture this moment. The sun is watching them closely, warming them with rays of affirming heat. A slight breeze shuffles the papers and lifts Lance’s hair from its place on his forehead before dumping the slightly damp strands onto sticky, golden skin. With practiced ease he clicks the camera icon to freeze his friend’s love in time. 

His camera roll is entirely full of frozen moments of his friends. Nothing of him. Never him. It’s the way he likes it and it’s the way he’ll keep it. His friends deserve to be immortalized, to be remembered in all of their staggering glory and bright lives. 

Lance’s life is different. It’s grimy and dirty and chaotic. But he thrives in the chaos. It’s livable. His brain is loud and messy and uncontrollable and he would never force that upon them. So he observes and laughs when it’s right and takes up just enough space to be present but never lingering. He doesn’t deserve to linger, he thinks. 

Keith is someone who lingers. 

And Keith is who is striding across the lawn of the commons. Wide strides that clear a path through the students sprinkled about. Confident strides that far outmatch Lance’s teetering steps. Unsure of their placement. 

“Hello Lance.” Keith is smiling down at him- breaking the hazy daze that is commandeering Lance’s brain as if Keith had come through swinging his arms to scare away the fog. 

Lance finds himself returning a shy smile and a wave, “Hello Keith.” 

Keith collapses onto his bum next to Lance, long legs stretching across the grass and off of the blanket. He rests with his thigh pressing into Lance’s and his shoulder pressing into Lance’s and his eyes turning to observe Hunk and Shay. 

Lance tunes back out of their conversation- he loves his friends- and he is content to sit in their presence and soak up the warmth and the happiness they radiate before he slips away into the tumbles of his own mind and gets lost in the maze trapping him there. He doesn’t think anything is wrong with him per se, it’s just easy to get stuck. Stuck in the maze and stuck in life and stuck alone. 

And then Lance is panicking. He’s suddenly aware,  _ too _ aware of the buzzing of the bumblebee next to his ear and the smell of the heavy July air and the pressure on his leg from Keith’s legs. His throat clenches in terror and he’s forcing back the bile and swinging his eyes wildly around for something,  _ anything _ , to ground him there. 

Keith. 

Lance’s hands fumble for Keith and he whips his body around so that he can bury himself in the older boy. Wrapping his arms around Keith’s waist he presses himself tightly into the boy’s essence. He’s desperate, frantic to inhale every part of his friend so that he doesn’t float away from Lance for good. And Keith just smiles languidly and wraps his arms around Lance’s shoulders and pecks out soft kisses on the side of Lance’s head. He’s there. Keith is there. Hunk is there. Shay is there. Lance’s friends, or half of them, gathered up around him. He knows that they wouldn’t leave him but he’s powerless to stop the bursts of sporadic terror that convinces him he’ll lose everything. He’s powerless to stop the bursts of manic energy that forces him to spend his money on them to ensure they won’t forget him. The bursts that make him give away his possessions and his books. The bursts that make him watch as someone inhabiting his soul rips away chunks of his heart to hand to his friends even though he knows they’ll take those chunks away when they leave him. 

He knows they will. Because he gets upset or he gets hyper or he gets angry and he screams and cries and rushes to fit every emotion in the universe into his fingers and throw them blindly away. 

But the worst part is he doesn’t  _ know _ how to stop. He doesn’t have an explanation for Shiro when package after package starts showing up at the apartment. Or an explanation for Pidge when he’s drunk all of her coffee and ran a marathon around the neighborhood. Or an explanation for Hunk when he’s used all of the baking supplies to make a batch of cookies that he leaves in the oven only to forget and leave to burn. He doesn’t  _ know _ . 

Every time he can’t force his body to get out of bed or his brain to stop his latest impulsive decisions he doesn’t know what to do. 

He sees it in their eyes sometimes. In the aftermath of his chaos- when the dust is cooling and he’s standing across the chasm and trying to shout over to them that he’s made it through just fine. They’re scared. He doesn’t know if they’re scared  _ of _ him or  _ for _ him but he supposes it doesn’t really matter. 

So he curls himself into Keith and blinks away his tears. 

\----------------------------------------------------

He’s panting. Hard. His breath won’t come to his lungs even though he can feel that he’s gasping for air. Something’s wrong but he can’t remember what. 

He’s running. There’s shouting. People are screaming and laughing and grabbing at his skin. 

Sweat. Running down the back of his leg. It swirls down his thigh and pools in the back of his knee until it spills and tumbles down the swell of his calf before soaking into his socks. 

Tracing the pattern of the sweat he gulps down air. Relief flooding him as he gathers the strength to finish this mission: run. From what he doesn’t know but he knows he has to run. He has to  _ GO GO GO GO GO.  _ He has to run. 

His breath is visible in front of him and it curls out and up in swirling puffs as it escapes the flushed pink of his lips. It’s following him as if it’s asking him, ‘ _ Lance, why are you running?’  _

But his mind literally cannot procure the answer. He was at that party- one that Shay had insisted Hunk come to which meant Lance came along as well. Lance always followed Hunk. Hunk was safe- because when he was with Hunk he could focus on reality. The safe shell of knowledge that didn’t puppet his actions and force his hand. 

_ Hunk. Hunk and Shay. Hunk and Shay turned around and Lance-  _

Lance had already taken off. But why? It didn’t matter he couldn’t stop. 

He pumped his arms harder and willed his aching body to move faster and further. But light spilled into his way and blinded him. It was bright and commanding and it screamed at him to stop. Lance skidded to a stop in the middle of the pavement. His phone caught his eye- lit up as a blinding fluorescent in the middle of the empty world.  **KEITH.**

With shaky hands and panting breath spreading foggy tendrils of his soul through the air he raises the phone to his ear, “Hello?”

“Lance!” Keith is panting and Lance can hear him turn away from the phone, still speaking to someone, and when someone addresses him next it’s Shiro. 

“Lance, buddy, where are you?” Shiro sounds exhausted. Lance can see the curve of his shoulders as he lets the trapped air out of his chest and deflates before sucking in more oxygen that expands his chest out again. 

“Um. I’m in the road.” He glances around him, his vision is hazy and he can’t seem to get the world in front of him into focus. He reaches out with one hand to grasp at the stars, but they’re too far away. Sometimes Lance thinks that Shiro hung the stars in the sky- because Shiro is so good at everything he had to have been the one to build the world that Lance occupies temporarily. 

There’s voices in his ear that snap him back to the road, “What road is it, can you find a sign anywhere, Lance?” 

Shiro’s asking. He’s asking for a sign. Lance has a sign! He’d seen it across the room of the party, under shitty LED lighting and the rings of smoke blown from college student’s bongs. It was a painting on the wall. It depicted two men, one was sinking into the ground and the other was rising into the air. It was for him. His sign. He couldn’t share it because then it wouldn’t be  _ his _ . 

“I have one but I can’t tell you,” Is all that he manages to utter. His voice sounds rough against the crisp air he’s breathing in and he momentarily wonders if every breath he takes means there’s one less breath for somebody else out there. 

“Okay Lance, Pidge found you, we're coming to get you. Please don’t move.” Shiro is speaking again but Lance is setting the phone down. He slips it into his pocket without hanging up and begins to cross the road. He’s walking off center and stumbling, but he isn’t drunk. The only thing invading his senses is Life. The very existence of Life is filling his lungs and in this one moment he feels the stiffness of the concrete beneath his feet and the brushing of cotton against his skin and the tingle of metal against his neck and the heavy, heavy pressure of humanness on his soul. 

That’s where they find him- shivering against the frosty air and staring intently up at the stars as if they shared a secret. 

“Lance, what the hell are you doing?” Pidge is red in the face and flustered but he doesn’t even glance her direction. 

A silly grin splits his face in two and unblinkingly he continues to stare before raising his hands to cup them out in front of him. 

“Holding the universe.”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lance has a routine. He needs a routine. A routine makes him feel in order, in control. 

When he breaks his routine a wave of anxiety slams down onto him and knocks him off his feet. It keeps pounding and pounding at him until he digs fingernails into his scalp and his soul cracks and his eyes begin to water and he’s begging the stars to fill the hole in his chest with a supernova. 

Lance supposes that he is a dying star. On the edge of imploding and disappearing off the pages of life forever. It frightens him- that he gives so much of himself to the universe and the universe builds walls between Lance and the rest of the world in return. 

He thinks the stars mock him. They dance around the Sun as she winks lazily at his misfortune and giggles silently while he cries. The Sun does not understand him because to her the solution is simple. But to him it is not. 

The Moon however, understands. She knows the tragic truth of how Lance has surrendered his life and his death to his rituals. How he turned his back on life because he was afraid of the intensity with which it burned. He thinks sometimes that she is sad. Sad that she burned him and left him to try to heal alone. She had to know he couldn’t. 

It’s later that he realizes the Sun has to know as well. Because the Sun gave him Keith. Someone as perfect, as ethereal as Keith had to have been crafted specially. Because even though he hates hugs Keith will always open his arms wide for Lance and kiss his cheeks to take away the tears. Because Keith will always answer his phone when Lance calls him at 3 am and explains that the universe began as a silent black expanse of nothing and that the Sun and the Moon created the universe in that space so they would never be lonely and when you die that space is where you go. Nothing and Peace. Peace and Nothing. Because Keith nods and then murmurs his agreements before reminding Lance of the time and the importance of sleep. He thinks sometimes that Keith can tell when he’s teetering, when he’s seconds away from spending every cent in his checking account or giving away all of his left handed gloves. Because Keith is  _ there _ and he never leaves and Lance thinks that the Sun and the Moon have to know that Lance doesn’t know how to love but he loves Keith. 

Though he thinks it is pretty cruel they let him love the only man who would never love him back. 

And how could Lance expect him to? How could Lance march up to Keith and rip out his heartstrings to offer the bloody mass of tendons to the other boy and demand something in return. No. Lance doesn’t deserve it. 

How could he demand Keith love somebody that wasn’t real? 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cold air dusts across his skin. Something is rattling in the air grate next to his bed. A small bug flits about the air in front of his nose. The pillow is creasing lines into his cheeks and in turn his tears are soaking stains into his freshly changed sheets. 

He’s wrapped up in Keith’s sweater. A big, fluffy, cream colored, cable-knit sweater that swallowed his frame and fell to his mid thigh. It felt bigger than the last time he had nicked it from Keith’s closet and he vaguely wonders if he’s eaten this week. Sometimes he forgets. 

He can feel it today. 

The hole in his chest. It’s killing him again. 

A brutal reminder of his humanness. A tether to a world he isn’t sure he belongs in. A world he isn’t sure wants him. 

The hole spreads a numbness through his body that freezes his insides and works slowly to shut down his body. He feels every loss- it starts with his fingers and toes, then his legs and arms, and his neck. And when he’s laying horizontally on his bed, his organs start to stop. Every shuddering breath he takes reminds him of his mortality and expendability. The Universe sends him reminder after reminder that he is only borrowing the atoms making up his eyes and his toes and his stomach. Lance lays there until the only thing he can feel anymore is his mind. When his soul abandons him and all that remains is his brain he lets it all go and slips away. 

He always wakes up. 

But, the thoughts don’t go away. They linger, pressing indents into the walls of his brain so that later he can read them all again and again and remember the feeling of the knife tracing his heart. The pressure is just enough to hurt but not enough to kill. He has to take that step. 

But he won’t because he’s afraid. He’s afraid of never seeing his friends again. Of missing Hunk’s smiles, Shiro’s hugs, Pidge’s laughter, Shay’s eyes, Allura’s kindness and Keith. He knows he can never have Keith- could never have Keith as more than a friend. His connections with people always remain as they begin, shallow and unfulfilling so that when they get sick of Lance’s financial habits and middle-of-the-night phone calls they won’t take as much of his heart away with them. 

He recognizes this feeling as a regular in his recurring cast of emotions. He wants to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that he exists. Or something like that. His wanting that is morbid, he knows that. But he craves it when he gets like this- so twisted up in his own brain that he becomes incapable of connecting his thoughts and submits to slamming his hands over his ears and begging his mind to stop spinning. 

He remembers going through the motions but the rest is a haze. A blur of faces and noises and pleas to answer when they text him. 

He never does. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He wakes up in the dirt. His skin is coated with a layer of powdery earth. It’s soaking into him- attaching itself to every bit of exposed skin and fabric. But he’s awake. 

The world doesn’t feel different to him. It still feels like humidity and July and loneliness so a tiny part of Lance hopes that he’s still in his borrowed world. That he can go home and be friends with Keith and live in pain but still live. He knows it’s probably too good to be true but his phone is in his pocket and he has over 100 missed calls and messages and from what he can see Hunk is furious. 

He can’t remember why he left them. 

  
  


Shiro finds him. Sitting in the dirt on the side of the road over 45 minutes away from home. 

And Shiro is crying, which confuses Lance. But the older man scoops Lance up into his arms and crushes him with a hug into a strong chest and steady heartbeat and begs Lance to never run away again. 

And Lance- for a split second- recognizes that Shiro loves him. It petrifies him. And all he can do is stand there with tears streaming down his cheeks in thin lines as Shiro checks him over for injuries and begs and begs. 

Shiro rubs Lance’s back comfortingly then moves his hands to wipe the grime away from his eyes and face. He can feel the relief in Shiro’s shoulders and watches as he calms his breathing to address Lance. 

Lance can’t hear him. He’s watching Shiro’s mouth move and shape and push words out from the tip of his tongue so that they hang thickly in the space between the two. But the words don’t hit Lance. They bounce off the glass walls around him until deflating and falling to the ground. 

So Lance brings his hands up to cup Shiro’s face between them. Delicately and gently he brings his eyes up to meet Shiro’s and offers him a wavering smile. Tears gather in the corners of the other man’s eyes and Lance wants to take them away, even though he knows that he was the cause. 

  
  


Shiro drives Lance home in his old pickup truck. It’s a piece of shit frankly and their friends are always on Shiro about trading it in for something functional. The floor is rusted from age and exposure so badly that the pavement of the road is visible flying past Lance’s feet resting lightly on the aged metal. There’s a strange rattling sound coming from the locked glove box that they never found the keys for and every so often the vents cough up a small burst of frozen air to battle with the steadily overheating dashboard. Lance loves the truck and is always pleading on his knees for Shiro to give her just one more chance- to think of all she has done for them. 

Shiro, of course, always agrees and the two find themselves patching holes with cardboard and duct tape and spit. The engine is mostly taped together parts that overheat and rattle and sputter along but the engine still does its job. 

Lance thinks that maybe the beat up blue truck is meant to be his friend. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keith kisses him on a Thursday. 

They’re sitting outside on a bench. Lance can feel the cracked wood through his jeans. The Sun is staring down at him as a reminder, not to take too much. 

Of course Lance does. 

They were talking about Keith’s last lesson of the day and the professor that has it out for him when Lance makes a comment about jealousy. And then Keith is whispering to him, ‘ _ Can I kiss you, Lance?’ _

And Lance is nodding, ignoring the screaming sirens in the back of his brain and leaning forward to press his lips to Keith’s. 

He feels. 

Lance feels.

He had spent his forever trying to squash down the emotions that flew out of him at intensities too much for him to handle but here he was kissing the boy of his dreams on a park bench while the Sun burns holes in his back. 

He realizes later that night when Keith walks Lance back to his dorm what a mistake he’s made. Everything he’d worked to build he has fucked up completely. He’s taken too much from this borrowed reality and it’s about to come crumbling down around him. And when the dust clears he will be alone and hurting and bold enough to seek that silent finality of Peace. 

This time it’s different. He doesn’t want to lose Keith. 

Lance scrambles for his earbuds and sinks to the ground on the inside of the doorway, pressing his shoulder blades into the drywall door. He connects the earbuds to his phone messily and frantically presses the volume until it’s all the way up. He hits shuffle and feels his body relinquish control to the deafening vibratos ringing in between his ear drums. The noise washes away all of his thoughts- filling his head with music and only music to silence the drumming of his own cowardice. It’s a beat to drown out the thoughts. A sound so high he cannot even think. The lyrics so close to home he doesn’t even blink. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lance explodes at Keith on Saturday. He can’t help it sometimes and the emotions that flash across Keith’s face are enough to reduce Lance to tears. Lance’s hands fly up to cover his mouth as he realizes what he’s done. And he curses his cowardice as he runs. He runs away from Keith and from his room and from his friends and from his life. His world is crumbling down, tumbling into nothing and he’s sinking further and further into the mud with no one to save him. No Keith to answer the phone this time. 

He runs until he collapses. His legs shaking underneath him as he sinks down into the cool dirt of the earth. His hand brushes against a patch of dewy grass and he closes his eyes. His body begins to sink then. Sinks lower and lower into the dirt and Lance drinks in the way that it consumes him. Tearing and clawing at parts of his skin until he begins to bleed and decay. 

Is he dying? 

Maybe. It would be best if he does, he decides. The Sun warned him- you could look but not touch. And he tried. He tried to live, to exist in that world that he did not own. He reached out and smashed down the glass walls and cut up his arms clawing his way out. All for Keith- who made Lance want to be a permanent fixture in his world. And now he was paying the price by giving his body to the earth. 

He spreads his arms out wide from his body- splitting his fingers as far as they’ll go to flutter gently through the wildflowers just out of his reach. He closes his eyes and focuses on the small pebble digging into his lower back and the itch of the grass blades against his arms and the smell of the flowers. 

In the morning his friends would forget him. Keith would move on and find someone worthy of his kisses and cable-knit sweaters and love. 

Love. 

Something Lance could never have. 

But he  _ could _ have this. This moment of clarity where he can lay out his very being and beg the Universe for forgiveness. For another chance.

It’s something he finds himself doing often.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sometimes Lance feels like he’s in a little glass display case. 

Whispers follow him in the halls as people try to work him out. 

_ Oh, Lance Mcclain. Yes, he’s beautiful but is he real?  _

_ I heard he’s crazy.  _

_ He was the one who lit the teacher’s pool table on fire.  _

_ Is that the boy who speaks to the stars?  _

They don’t  **know** anything. They don’t know  **him** , he has to remind himself. They would never understand that when the idea to light that fire popped into his brain the actions were already beginning. He had chosen the lighter and chosen the firewood and if Hunk hadn’t pulled him away Lance would have been consumed by the blaze as well- the smoke already making his thoughts cloudy. 

When he goes out people flit around him, creating a shell of space that protects him from their prying touch and piercing eyes. 

Lance supposes part of it is his appearance. He wears too big sweaters and too tight jeans and always has specks of glitter sticking to his skin, mixing into the light dusting of freckles across his cheeks. His hair is an untamed mop of waves atop his tanned skin and thin neck stretching upwards at a slight curve. He’s thin and tall- lanky- and utterly desirable. 

His mother used to pinch his cheeks and trace the line of his cheekbones and assure him he couldn’t be real. Because how could someone so beautiful be real? 

And of course he believed her, she raised him. And then she would dress him up in pretty silks and satin and praise his svelte figure with showers of pretty gifts adorned with sparkles and glitter and smelling of money before parading him out to her friends who would trace curved, slender fingers down his body and murmur agreements to his unmatched beauty and purr that she should keep him in a life sized box to make sure Life never marrs his features.

His father would gather around with his friends and they’d grunt approval and run rough fingers up his thighs in ways that made Lance want to run and outwardly protest his “feminine appearance” while in secret they would leave him pretty gifts and praise. 

So when his parents would host extravagant galas and banquets on their sprawling lawn they would dress Lance up like a little doll and send him into the crowd to charm their guests, Lance began to believe them. No one believed in him. He was an idea, a  _ concept _ , a painting that the Moon crafted and sent down to earth. A gift. 

He was never treated as a real person, and he supposes that was the Moon’s first conversation with him.  _ ‘You are young and beautiful but you are not real.’  _

They don’t fear him, but they keep their distance as if they’re afraid that stars are resting in his veins- ready to burst at the first sign of real people. Again, maybe that is the truth, he got too close to Keith and the stars burst out. Ripping through his skin in a violent, desperate attempt to keep Lance in his case. To keep him away from others. 

  
  


It works for a while. It always does, until Lance gets itchy and anxious and annoying and has to throw his hands out and grab his friend’s hands and thread their fingers together so he knows that at least they are real. 

Lately, Lance is teetering- on the edge of cracking into thin spiderwebs that split his skin and allow his blood to drip out and abandon him. On the edge of clawing his way on bloody hands and knees to Keith and begging him to save him. 

But he knows he cannot. He knows he cannot demand that of anyone. So he allows the spiderwebs to grow and the blood to drip and the numbness to spread. 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lance carries the Sun in his hands- her scalding fire burning holes into his hands. He carries the Moon in his pocket, her silver slivers illuminating his chest when it becomes dark. 

It’s night time. And Lance is standing in front of a dimly lit billboard advertising free consultations for plastic surgery. He runs his hands along the velvety skin of his arm and up the soft curve of his neck and along the keen edge of his jaw. Is he plastic? He feels like plastic. 

A plastic boy made by the Moon. He is merely a picture to be admired. He knows he isn’t smart or talented or is comparable on any level to his friends. They keep him because he is pretty and alluring to gaze at and entertaining to watch when he swings into his moods and begins to truly speak. 

It is here- standing in front of a shitty billboard for a company that looks completely fake that Lance has his epiphany. 

The Sun and the Moon are Fear and Love. One fades as the other rises. 

He thinks of the missed calls accumulating from his mother and father, asking him to come home and let them see their pretty little thing. He thinks of the messages from Shiro, asking Lance if he would like to come over to Shiro’s apartment and eat dinner because Shiro noticed Lance hadn’t eaten today. He thinks of the messages from Hunk reminding Lance that he has to go to class and asking if he would like to come out to the park with Hunk and Shay because they miss him and want to hear his laugh. He thinks of the messages from Allura asking when he would like to come have a sleepover and paint each other’s nails because they haven’t had one in a while and Allura misses seeing him. He thinks of the messages from Pidge asking if he’s seen her keypad mouse at the flat and if he’s going to be home in time to help her cook something other than ramen while they begin a new season of their favorite show. He thinks of his messages with Keith where Keith reminds Lance that he is somebody and he is real and that he is smart. 

And Lance realizes suddenly and all at once that he has Love. He holds Love close to him as a dear friend and companion. 

The Sun is Fear and the Moon is Love and they coexist in his heart in a striking tango. 

And he knows now. He knows. 

So Lance digs into his pocket and brings out the Moon to rest in his palm beside the Sun. He watches as they flame and spark and dance with each other like reunited lovers who have been away from  _ home.  _

Home. 

He feels like a dying star that has been reignited by the spark of another. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lance can remember his first ever boyfriend. His mother had introduced the man to him. Lance had been 15 and the other man had been 26. He had wanted a pretty little toy to shower gifts upon and dress up in clothes the price of a castle and hang off of his arm at expensive parties. Lance, of course, had believed it was Love. Love tugging on his sleeve as a constant reminder of what she had given him. 

Now Lance knows that Love was tugging on his sleeve to try to warn Lance and save him. But Lance misread the signs and three months later found himself standing outside the man’s house half dressed as the Moon rained her tears down upon his head because he’d been thrown out. 

The man had asked Lance if he would pretty please get on the bed and let him fuck him senseless- and when Lance refused the man had sighed and taken a long drag on his cigarette before staring at the boy with lidded eyes and proclaiming  _ “You are beautiful but you do not mean a thing to me.”  _

Lance found out the next morning that the man’s friends had planned on passing Lance around like a little doll. He had cried over his life then. He had discovered the nauseating truth that he was merely floating around the glowing edges of the earth- allowed to look but never to stay. 

  
  


And Lance can remember the first time he knew that he was Keith’s but Keith was not his. 

They were at a party. A shitty college party that had too much bass and not enough alcohol and an overflow of Keith running through his blood. Lance thinks he may have been drunk on Keith that night because he remembered being on the receiving end of one of the other boys’ smiles and stumbling into a bush before being righted by strong hands cupping underneath his arms gently with a laugh and shining eyes. 

And Lance had been so afraid of that feeling that he had turned around and drowned himself in cheap vodka. He can remember the pounding of his blood behind his vision and the swaying of the room as he climbed on that table and the laughter of his friends and strangers amused by his actions. He had searched for Keith’s gaze and found it- as usual- settled on Lance. A constant reminder of Keith’s dedication and loyalty to his friends.  _ Friends.  _

Tears had slipped down his cheeks and he watched Keith’s amused fond slip into a concerned frown before throwing his arms out to the sky and tilting his chin up and squeezing his eyes closed before bellowing up into the sky  _ ‘WE ARE IMMORTAL AND UNTOUCHABLE.’  _

Then he sunk to his knees, cradling his head in his hands as the guests around him laughed his mania off as Lance’s dedication to histrionics. Keith had quite literally lifted him up and off the table before planting Lance’s feet on the ground and pressing a kiss to his forehead. A ritual he knew calmed the younger boy. Lance remembered their conversation as Keith dragged him, sweaty and sparkling and dazed, home to the flat. 

_ ‘I do believe you’ve had too much to drink, Lance.”  _

_ “On the contrary. I have only drunk Life.”  _

_ “You are a dizzyingly beautiful person.”  _

_ He’d taken a moment to swallow before answering, “I have paid for it. I have beauty but can not have Love.”  _

_ “Why not?” _

_ “Love is not a gift for plastic dolls.”  _

He couldn’t remember anything else besides a frown and soft hands lowering his heavy body into a bed. 

It was a habit of his: getting drunk on the night time stars so that he felt brave enough to utter the thoughts he never dared to in the sunlight. Secrets and fears spilling from between his lips swollen from chewing the skin off. He would latch his teeth onto a piece of dry skin and tear and tear until a thin strip of skin separated from his lip and left a bleeding and raw strip in its wake. He craved that pain, that raw unfiltered brevity that tore his skull open and laid out the inner workings of his brain for everyone who wished to to take a look. They would find cobwebs and sad thoughts and a lonely soul. 

It was a habit he picked up as a ritual before his parent’s lavish garden parties. His mother would strike his cheek and grab his wrist harshly before lathering vaseline and coconut oil onto his lips to transform them into smooth and delectable accessories to his face. 

Nowadays he liked to chew them so raw that chapstick would only burn the cuts and reopen the wounds. 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lance thinks there is nothing more artistic than loving people. More specifically, loving Keith. Keith who sits beside him as he shakes from built up energy and Keith who wraps his arm lazily around his shoulder and runs his fingers up and down Lance’s arm in languid patterns to calm him and Keith who brings Lance fruit to eat and reminds him to study for class and who tugs Lance into tight hugs before sweeping him off his feet and carrying him into bed for a nap. 

Lance spends  _ hours _ studying Keith. Committing the lines of his face and the feeling of being pressed against his chest and the curve of his nose and the softness of his hair and the way his fingers dance across Lance’s skin to memory. 

And suddenly Lance finds himself sharing pieces of himself with Keith. The darkest, deepest parts of  _ Lance _ that are all he has and he’s handing them over to Keith to be examined and judged and returned. But Keith never judges. He gathers up the pieces of Lance- the stories of his childhood, his friendship with the Sun and the Moon, his need for music to drown out his thoughts- and lays them out to study and then tucks them away and loves Lance even more than before. 

It isn’t until a month has passed that Lance realizes that he feels  _ human. _ Tangible and flesh and blood. Keith has made him feel real. He wants to sprint home and collect the Moon off of her seat atop his dresser and ask her what the cost is. But slowly, Lance is beginning to see that there might not have to be a cost. 

So he twirls Keith’s hair between his fingers dreamily and whispers to him that Keith is the Moon and Lance is the Sun and they were made to love each other. The smile that Keith gives him is worth everything he has risked. Lance used to think that he had been mutilated by a lack of love. But the truth was that he had been mutilated by his inability to see it. His inability to see reality. He was never warned about the terror of one person aching in one place all alone and untouched and unspoken to. But he had felt it and he had lived in it and he had loved it. That emptiness in his chest had been the feeling he craved until he had begun to drown on his own blood and tears and fears. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He can’t help but wonder if it will end. If  **his** reality would come crashing down and Keith would realize that Lance is just a piece of pretty sculpting meant to be thought about for a while then abandoned for something sculpted right on the inside as well. He can’t help but wonder if he’s grown to rely on other people to assure him that he is safe and well and doing just fine. But he can’t think on his own because  _ those _ thoughts come rushing back and he finds himself alone in a swirling pool of murky water trying to pull him down, down, down beneath the waves. So he latches onto Keith and Shiro and Hunk and Allura and Pidge and finds that they don’t mind, they  _ want _ to be there to support him. 

It’s a foreign feeling but he finds that he doesn’t mind. 

And then he goes home. 

His parents had been bothering him for months and months about visiting and he should have known that there would be layers. But still he flies almost eight hours plus a long, silent car ride to his parents looming, white, silent house in the middle of nowhere Texas. 

He finds himself clenching the bottom of a white, metal lawn chair at the center of his parents latest party. Acquaintance after acquaintance comes up to him to touch his skin and feel his hair and examine him like a butterfly whose wings have been pinned down underneath a glass case. 

_ He hasn’t changed at all!  _

_ Oh! How beautiful. We should keep him here to gaze at during Croquet. _

_ What a specimen. Are you sure you didn’t have someone sculpt him.  _

_ Oh my! Is he for sale?  _

He listens to his parents laugh and joke about prices while his eyes cloud over and he attempts to ignore the hands trailing up his thighs. 

He can feel Keith slipping away from him. He can feel Lance slipping away. He doesn’t even think he’s at the party anymore- in his mind he’s laying on Keith’s chest attempting to memorize the rhythm of his breathing while he drifts off reading a novel. He doesn’t hate who he is with Keith. With them he feels real and human and like a person with opinions and thoughts and a voice. Here he feels like a product on a shelf. He lets them touch him and pet him and stroke his cheek and run gold clad fingers down his throat. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shiro picks him up from the airport because Keith is working. He knows something is wrong, Lance knows it’s written across his face. But he feels cheap and worthless and dismal. He wants to feel Life again. He needs his Moon. He needs his Love. 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keith is standing in front of their apartment building. Everyone else is gathered around to welcome him home but all he can see is Keith. _Keith._ **Keith.**

Fuck. He makes his decision. Balancing the Sun and the Moon between his hands. 

Shiro pulls into the parking spot in front of the group and for a moment Lance slides his eyes shut and focuses on the sweat dripping down the back of his neck and underneath his shirt. The slow rivulets carving out a story on his neck. 

He climbs down from the truck, not pausing to stretch his limbs or crack his sore back. He needs to do it, he has to confess. 

“Lance.” Keith is smiling at him, the look in his eyes one that Lance is too afraid to label. 

“Keith.” Lance reaches out and grasps his Moon’s hands in his, “I adore you.” 

Keith lets out a breath of laughter, “I adore you more.” 

“I want to stay. With you. I want to stay.” 

Keith presses a soft, familiar kiss to the back of Lance’s hand, “I want that too. For you to want to stay. I have grown quite used to you.” 

Lance smiles shyly, “I- My brain isn’t right. It makes me do things and they scare me and sometimes it’s violent and raw and not safe and I’m scared of hurting you.” 

“My darling, I would endure a tempest for you. For the chance to be near you. Lance, I love you. I love you with all I have and I want to be there for you. I don’t care what you say to me or what you do to me.” 

“I’m going to fuck up. I will say cruel nothings and hurt you and make you angry and scared and unsure of the stability of our relationship. Because I can’t control it. Things happen and I let them come out and I follow through because I can’t stop myself.” 

“I might fuck up too. It’s human. Lance, I know this is hard for you, but you are worthy of every star in the sky and every sunbeam that hits the earth.” 

“I love you. I want to stay.” 

“In the end, Lance, I will  _ always _ seek you out amongst the stars. The space dust will hear me whisper ‘ _ I love you _ ’ into the infinity of the universe.” 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed, this work is deeply personal to me and I hope it was worthwhile to read and to remember!


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